


variations on a theme

by honey_wheeler



Category: The Office (US)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-09
Updated: 2012-03-09
Packaged: 2017-11-01 16:40:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/359032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honey_wheeler/pseuds/honey_wheeler





	variations on a theme

_i. with 6 you get eggroll_

Creed will eat anything. Jalapenos, organ meats, unknown substances. His rule is, if it’s in a bowl it’s lunch. He’s a regular at every restaurant in town that has three dollar lunch specials and a B- or lower from the Health Department hanging crookedly in the window. Oscar once took Gil to a barbecue at Creed’s place and noticed a pile of brownish steaks in a cooler, swimming in half-melted ice, all bearing stickers that read _reduced for final sale_. 

“It’s the drugs,” Creed says. “Dulled my senses.” Then he offers his chopsticks for inspection. “That’s an ear,” he says, before popping it into his mouth. Oscar thinks maybe Creed is just strange and that the drugs and the food are only symptoms.

He’s partial to Asian food. He makes special requests from the chef, speaking in Mandarin or Cantonese. Oscar can’t tell. When he asks Creed where he learned to speak Chinese, Creed’s only answer is _oh, around_.

Creed holds a lumpy, reddish object aloft, pinched between his chopsticks. “Not bad,” he says. He dips it into a puddle of soy sauce. “Of course it’s not as good as it is when I make it, but it’s not bad.”

“Where’d you learn to cook that sort of stuff anyway?”

“Oh, you know.” Creed shrugs his shoulders. “Prison.”

 

_ii. meatballs_

They have lunch together two or three times a week. It’s a nice break from the office, from the cameras and the pettiness and the drama. From who’s secretly dating whom and who said what. Oscar feels like he and Creed are camp counselors in some 80s movie, sometimes, adults stuck in a teeming sea of hormones and bickering and arrested development. Even worse are the days he feels himself regressing with them, fighting over posters, gossiping. Those nights he goes home and drinks red wine and makes Gil listen to opera just so he can feel like a boring, stuffy grown-up for a while.

They never talk about the office while they’re at lunch. Creed can barely remember anyone’s name anyway, so it wouldn’t exactly be illuminating conversation. 

 

_iii. lime in the coconut_

There’s a conference in Akron. Oscar’s the default representative from accounting, since Kevin’s deathly afraid of air travel and Angela thinks hotel rooms with shared bedding are unsanitary. He and Creed fly out on Friday afternoon. On the plane Oscar reads an Abraham Lincoln biography while Creed pockets tiny bottles of liquor and a barf bag. 

Their hotel is near the airport, in the middle of deserted office parks and industrial warehouses. A quick investigation of the hotel bar reveals nothing more interesting than karaoke, so they have a couple drinks and then retreat to their room for the night. Oscar flips through television channels aimlessly. Creed is sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the mini-bar, its contents spread across the carpet in front of him. He’s making a cocktail of all the alcohol before refilling the bottles with water and replacing them in the fridge.

“So how long have you known you were gay?” Creed doesn’t look up when he asks, just fiddles intently with the poptop of a soda can. For a moment Oscar doesn’t know what to say. Then he decides to just answer.

“I guess I always did. Didn’t make it official until senior year of high school.” His prom date had been a girl named Lisa Lubbock. She was blonde, blue-eyed, a member of the debate club. The corsage he bought matched her dress perfectly. By the end of the night he was making out behind the gym with Dan, her best friend Susie’s date, while Lisa and Susie danced with the student body president and the captain of the swim team, respectively.

“I experimented with a few fellows in college myself,” Creed tells him. “Maybe at Woodstock, too. I can’t remember much of that but it stands to reason.”

“Oh.” It’s inadequate, but it’s all the response Oscar can muster.

“Does anyone else know? Your family?”

“No. I haven’t…they’re pretty traditional.” Creed makes a noncommittal noise in response. Later, after they’ve turned out the lights and Creed is snoring like a Buick is lodged in his throat, Oscar lies awake. He stares at the red light of the smoke alarm and wonders what his mother would say.

A week after their return, corporate gets a hotel bill that includes the cost of 4 towels, 2 lightbulbs, the contents of the mini-bar, and a television remote, so Creed’s conference privileges are suspended indefinitely. After that Oscar goes to a few conferences alone, or sometimes Toby comes with him, which is fine because he likes Toby, but it’s not quite the same.

 

_iv. mexican’t_

Oscar pokes through the tape collection heaped on the dash in Creed’s car. They’re on their way to Creed’s favorite Mexican restaurant in town. He thinks Oscar should eat Mexican food more. _Don’t be such a gringo,_ he says, but Oscar’s always had a tenuous relationship with his culture, at best. 

He picks up a handful of cassettes and examines them. Kiss. Steely Dan. Air Supply? He raises an eyebrow at Creed, holds it up wordlessly. Creed only shrugs. “Sometimes I’m a little sensitive,” he says.

Creed is greeted by name at the door. The restaurant is dim and dark, filled with dark red banquettes and candles in orange hurricane lamps. Creed looks around after they’re seated.

“This is nice,” he comments. “I didn’t know it looked like this in here.”

“I thought you ate here all the time.”

“I usually just wait outside the kitchen door for leftovers and scraps.” He inspects his menu. Oscar decides to let that comment slide.

He listens to the waiters speaking Spanish. He’d always been resistant to learning to speak it; he mostly just listened to his grandparents and parents and answered in English. But being here reminds him of his grandmother’s kitchen, of the quinceañeras and the Christmas parties, of the warm smell of tamales and his grandfather’s Cuban cigars. All the things he loved before he knew he was too different for them.

When he gets home he picks up the phone. It rings twice before his mother picks up.

“Hi Mom,” he says. “Yes, it’s good to hear your voice too. Look, I called because I have something to tell you.”


End file.
